Monthly Archives: February 2009

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I just found a new mag online, “Hyphen Magazine” — paging through it, I was caught by the high quality of art, sweeping brushstrokes, and bold photos. Article titles, hed & dek, even the subscriptions categories had me rollin’. It’s a magazine devoted to taking a fresh look at Asian America (yes, including the Midwest). As to race? They seem to take things tongue-in-cheek. A little irreverent. Lots of sense of humor. Getting into what is overlooked by more mainstream press. What else could I do? I subscribed.

I’ve got it linked under “Bayanihan Spirit”. Hyphen is a non-profit mag. The staff works for FREE. “We do it as a labor of love,” they say. I lift a glass of Dom to you — that’s bayanihan spirit. Mabuhay to Hyphen.

Check-it and subscribe if the spirit moves you. Let’s get that staff of artists, writers, and editors paid.

In “Globe-trotting and Time-travel” –> The Wampanoag Homesite, part of the Plimoth Plantation site. Learn about Thanksgiving from the perspective and experiences of the Wampanoag community. (National Geographic has a children’s book, 1621, A NEW LOOK AT THANKSGIVING, which shows historical re-enactments of the multi-day feast. A real eye-opener. What is factual? What is national mythology? Great for kids.)

One of the things I love about writing is what, over the years, I’ve come to know as The Flow. It’s that Time beyond time. It’s when the words come, in a smooth rush or a river of images, and I no longer feel I’m “in control” of the story. The Voice that rings in my body resounds like a bell tolling inside. I’m not really sitting at my desk or table or even really conscious of myself anymore. I become the pen and the ink rolling, spreading, curving on the page, the Energy of the Story as it comes. To me, as an artist, those moments are sacred. It’s a kind of surrender to intuition — I love that.

(Incidentally, I feel the same way about prayer. Fixed words usually don’t do it for me. Intuition and opening myself up to the larger Creative force feels more honest, more in-the-moment.)

There have been periods when I’ve written for 13 hours and not noticed that time has passed. It’s a kind of joyous absorption in something larger than myself.

What I know as F L O W,Â Robert Olen Butler, in his creative writing book FROM WHERE YOU DREAM, calls a “trancelike state”. And there are things we all do to slip into the trance. Me personally? I light a candle. I say whatever prayer comes to mind, mostly in the form of “Thank You, thank You, thank You for this precious time.” Or “Let me hear what needs to be heard.”

But these last two days, with my son home and sick and the trick of learning how to balance historical research with creative writing, email to respond to, deadlines, and catching a virus — well, it’s been less F L O W than Stop’n’Go. *lol*

You know those kind of days? When life seems to conspire against your showing up on the Page? Yes, time to cultivate a little patience and nudge my sense of humor.

Does F L O WÂ work the same way for musicians? Painters? Sculptors? Other writers? I wonder.

A tattered yellow book, ZEN FLESH, ZEN BONES sold for 50 cents at a used book store. Thin, old tape hangs the front cover onto the manuscript’s body; the back cover is lost to moves from Los Angeles to Berkeley to Chicago. Inside, over 100 stories and problems and ancient teachings from 5 centuries of Chinese and Japanese monks. Fun stories. Confusing stories. Stories that stick to me and make me breathe more slowly, with more appreciation of the world around me.

I’ve hiked the hills of Berkeley in California seeking solace, meditated the sand blowing across the ocher and limestone faces of dry desert cliffs at Red Rocks in Nevada, and stood in the glory of woods in Chicago where the low Fall sun slanted through golden maple leaves. What does it take to feel alive? To grasp the moment that is now, the dazzling mystery of the world we are in?

Somehow, we are lost. Rich as we have become as a nation, brilliant as we are with technological advances, as far as we’ve gone to explore space, still, we are lost. In our busy-ness, in my busy-ness…lost. Loving as we are, well-meaning as we are, we can lose ourselves; striving as we do just to make ends meet, we forget how deep beauty really is.

And it is deep.

So. This thread, KOAN OF THE WILD, is a play on the phrase “Call of the Wild”. A few observations,Â a kind of poetic puzzle. Writers know that words are poor substitutes for the real deal, for the actual EXPERIENCE of living. But here’s my humble attempt, anyhow. Poetry in the service of Nature.

An offering: Moments connecting with the Wilderness that is our World; moments that have taken my breath away. Sometimes, all it takes for me to feel the alive-ness of being alive is for me to run to the woods, the scent of loam and leaves on the river caught in the wind.